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Chapter 1 The Split Personality of the Calling 1963 was a rough year for funeral service. Caitlin Doughty, the famous crematory-operator-turned-author, called it “cremation’s year.”1 In July, the Catholic Church lifted its his- torical ban on cremation. e same year, the Funeral Consumers Alliance was founded, its stated goal to “keep tabs on the prices and practices of the funeral industry.”2 And it was in January of 1963 that e American Way of Death was published—Jessica Mitford’s meticulously researched, ruthlessly worded, virulent attack on funeral service. In her book, Mitford railed against ev- erything from product sales to morticians as grief counselors. She blasted pricing tactics, bemoaned the structure of the industry, and took aim at the most sacred institutions of funeral service. Hardly a stone was left unturned, and there was scarcely a component of the funeral director’s work with which Mitford did not take issue. e FTC’s Funeral Rule was enacted two decades later, and in her 1996 updated revision, Mitford all but accepted responsibility for the sweeping legislation that redened funeral service as we know it and put every mortuary in America on a short leash. She may well have been right to take credit. Directly or indirectly, her book gave America its per- spective on, and suspicion of, funeral service. Mitford did for Americans planning funerals what Upton Sinclair did for Americans eating bologna. For all her research and conviction, it’s tough to tell what Jessica 3 4 | The Right Way of Death Mitford intended as the result of her work. Her frustration with funeral service was clear; less so was her objective. To reform the business? To end it? e only calls to action Mitford oers are methods for consumers to avoid or outmaneuver funeral professionals; she never oers a roadmap for professionals to reform their trade. Whatever her intent, the result has certainly been destruction. e industry has not been reformed. In many ways, it has been cornered into doubling down on Mitford’s original complaints. Weighed down by the Funeral Rule, bad press, and an ugly consumer suspicion of practitioners, funeral service seems mired in personal shame and unable to pull itself out of the pit. Funeral care in America may be more heavily regulated, more deeply distrusted, and less lucrative than it was in 1963, but it is by no means better equipped to serve the public. Ironically, many of Mitford’s sharpest critiques (merchandise revenue, sales techniques) are ostensibly the only ways for the modern funeral home to survive amidst the uncer- tainty and pressure wrought by her work. Even today, the online reviews of e American Way of Death read like a complaint forum against the local mortuary. Everybody, it would seem, has a bone to pick and a story to tell. While Mitford was never sympathetic to funeral directors, she did unwittingly describe one of the most daunting challenges facing them. Funeral professionals, Mitford wrote, would “vastly prefer to be looked upon as ‘trained professionals with high standards of ethical conduct,’ but the exigencies of their trade still force them into the role of ‘mer- chants of a rather grubby order.’”3 Mitford concludes that funeral service is marked by “…the split personality of the calling, arising out of its inherent contradictions.”4 While her description is by no means attering, it raises an impor- tant question: what exactly should funeral directors be? Are they akin to waiters, with a responsibility to deliver exactly what a family asks but never suggest anything else? Or are they leaders, duty-bound to guide a family toward the decisions that will serve them best? Do they exist only The Split Personality of the Calling | 5 for the deceased, to quietly handle the body and its disposition? Or is the surviving family’s health and well-being something with which they should concern themselves? Are they counselors with a role of providing compassionate guidance? Or salespeople with numbers to hit? Should they be empathetic to reect the family’s state of mind? Or stoic, true to the fact that they have done this a thousand times? Should they act like the trustworthy servants they are? Or should they acknowledge that they know they’re perceived as self-interested and untrustworthy? Every time they answer “both,” America’s morticians nd their mis- sion increasingly diluted and obscured. ey must train their employees to handle a confusing and daunting list of paradoxes, and their customers expect them to impossibly become all of the above. What Mitford called “the split personality of the calling”5 has led to the paralysis of funeral directors since even before her book hit shelves. Funeral directors live in a precarious situation. Mitford, of all people, seemed to recognize this, even while she was disparaging them. e role of being simultaneously guardian and salesperson, leader and attendant, condant and business owner—it’s a terribly thin line to walk. All funeral directors know it; they can hardly introduce themselves or answer the friendly question of, “What do you do?” without being put on the defensive. ey are instantly asso- ciated with someone’s worst experience of death and subjected to a stern lecture on the worst assumptions about the business. What are they to do? All of this has led me, over the last few years, to ask a question of funeral directors and funeral home owners every time I get the chance. It started as a way to get a particular client on the record, but when the response was the opposite of what I expected, it grew into a sort of na- tional experiment. My data is purely anecdotal, but the question—and how you answer it—betrays an important understanding about modern funeral service. “Is there a right way to grieve?” 6 | The Right Way of Death If the answer is yes, that has implications for your business. Certain products, approaches, and even customers are “righter” than others, and your work is infused with a moral imperative to support them. Doctors, builders, mechanics—those professions in which there is a “right way” to do things—are duty-bound to do it right, and to provide for their customers a degree of consultative expertise. If there is a right way, then a funeral director is hired not just to get the job done, but to do it right, and to make recommendations to help the family do the same. If the answer is no, that too has implications. e job must sim- ply get done, and there’s no objectivity beyond what the customer wants. Retailers and restaurants come to mind here. e customer shows up when they want something, and it’s essentially the duty of the provider to give them what they ask for. In all but the nest restaurants, it doesn’t matter if the chef believes potatoes would pair perfectly with that dish; if the customer wishes to substitute a side salad, then that’s what they must receive. In food service and retail, the customer is always right. Conversely, in medicine and engineering, that concept is laughable; the expert is hired precisely because of the customer’s lack of expertise. So, we must ask into which category funeral service falls. Is there a right way to do this? Or are we simply retailers who serve at the pleasure of the customer? Mitford’s book—and in many ways, her life’s work—was built on the premise that there is no “right” way to do death. She contended that funeral service had duped the public into believing there is solely as a means to swindle them out of money. e families you serve, and argu- ably our culture at large, has swallowed this perspective hook, line, and sinker. When she died in 1996, Mitford’s husband had her cremated for $475. No funeral, no family present, no celebration or recognition of any kind.6 Just a direct cremation. Mitford was dead set on debunking the notions that morticians are experts in grief and that there are psychologi- cal benets to a funeral or viewing. If she was right, that has important implications for how you should do business. It would mean you need to The Split Personality of the Calling | 7 focus on whatever is going to sell the most products or meet demand the most expediently. It would mean you should build your company around the product du jour. If jewelry is in, then jewelry should be stocked on the walls. If the market wants direct cremation, then you should close up shop on the full-service side. It’s a clean, straightforward approach— and one to which many of your competitors (including some very well- funded ones) are unapologetically committed. On the other hand, if Mitford was wrong, and if there really is a right way to handle death, that has implications too. For one, it would mean that the ever-less-popular traditions against which Mitford railed so sharply really do have value, and that mortuaries were never wrong to promote them. It would also mean that a mortician’s work is not simply to deliver what clients want, but to work toward providing what they need. is is a more complicated road, but it’s arguably a more fullling one, and even a more lucrative one. It’s said, apocryphally but nonetheless poignantly, that Henry Ford was suspicious of design by focus group: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”7 If you’re looking for innovation—and success—the place to start prob- ably isn’t a customer satisfaction survey.

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